Researchers use AI to build viruses that infect and kill bacteria Researchers have designed and built functioning viruses that infect bacteria, called bacteriophages, using AI, raising important biosecurity and biosafety concerns. (Nanowerk News) Using AI, researchers have designed complete, functional bacteriophage genomes from scratch and tested them against bacteria that had evolved resistance to a natural bacteriophage (Science, "Generative design of bacteriophages with genome language models"). (Image: Reproduced from DOI:10.1126/science.aec2657)Here, Samuel King and colleagues introduce an approach to designing functional genomes that combines the Evo genomic language models they’d previously built (including Evo 1), computational biology, and experimental screening. They used this approach to generate complete bacteriophage genomes; bacteriophages have substantial utility as biotechnologies and have therapeutic relevance as treatments for bacterial infections. computationally designed hundreds of candidate genomes and experimentally identified 16 functional phages, whose genetic sequences and structures differed substantially from one another.